TMZ – Carrie Prejean demanded more than a million dollars during her settlement negotiations with Miss California USA Pageant officials — that is, until the lawyer for the Pageant showed Carrie an XXX home video of her handiwork.

We’re told it took about 15 seconds for Carrie to jettison her demand and essentially walk away with nothing. As we first reported, the Pageant is paying around $100,000 to her lawyers and publicist — a fraction of her bills. She pockets nothing in the settlement.

io9 – We got a few minutes to ask some tough questions of the man who only tosses softballs at V’s alien visitors. Scott Wolf talked about playing corrupt, ambitious journalist Chad Decker, and the pitfalls of sucking up to aliens. Spoilers…

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Deadspin – In sports, everybody is a winner—some people just win better than others. Like Alex Rodriguez, who won the weekend by pretty much just owning these playoffs. He’s like some amazing mythical creature!

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io9 – Which character in the genre world really gives you the chills? What slathering monster are you most afraid of? We compiled a list of the 80 scariest movie characters we could think of. Meet terror personified, below.

As you know, we only deal with science fiction and urban fantasy here, so Hannibal Lecter and the like are absent from this list.

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io9 – Most major religions, going back thousands of years, tell stories about the End of the World. And post-apocalyptic fiction is perennially popular. So why, in the last twenty years, has the apocalypse ceased to matter?

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io9 – What’s the secret connection between Quentin Tarantino and Felix Gaeta? What relationship between Bear McCreary (in person) and Starbuck did we almost see? We’ve got the exclusive answers, from Battlestar Galactica: The Official Companion Season Four.

Thanks to Titan Books for sending us these exclusive extracts from the BSG season 4 companion book, out now to coincide with the release of the direct-to-DVD “The Plan.” No, they won’t explain that whole “Opera House” thing, but they are pretty fascinating.

So here are five things you never knew about Battlestar’s final season: Click to Read More

NBC Chicago –

The Sun – The Fight Club star was reportedly weaving in and out of traffic at a red light yesterday afternoon when he lost control of his two-wheeler and fell off.

He was apparently sent crashing to the tarmac when his handlebar clipped a stationary car.

Brad promptly returned to his feet and moved his bike to the side of the road before taking refuge in an apartment building, according to TMZ.

It’s claimed he waited there until an aide came to pick him up, leaving his bike at the scene.

Contact Music – ASHLEE SIMPSON-WENTZ has been dropped from U.S. TV series MELROSE PLACE.

The singer/actress landed the role of Violet Foster, a small-town girl new to Los Angeles, in the remake of the 1990s soap opera.
But Simpson-Wentz’s part has now been cut from the show, along with co-star Colin Egglesfield’s character Auggie Kirkpatrick.
Executive producer Todd Slavkin says, “We felt that once the murder mystery (involving their characters) was resolved, the tone of the show was going to shift … and (Simpson-Wentz’s) character would move on.”

Simpson-Wentz and Egglesfield took the news “like professionals” because they were warned they could be dropped from the programme.
Slavkin says, “They knew ahead of time (that leaving was a possibility); it wasn’t a complete shock.”

CNN – A coalition of top musicians, including R.E.M. and Pearl Jam, want to know if their music was used by the U.S. military as part of controversial interrogation methods at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The artists have endorsed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, which were filed Thursday morning, asking the U.S. government to declassify documents that would reveal which artists’ work was used on detainees at U.S. prison facilities and military detention centers, including the one at Guantanamo Bay.

The National Security Archive, a Washington-based independent research institute that advocates “for the right to know,” filed the requests on behalf of the Close Gitmo Now campaign, which launched this week, the archive’s senior analyst Kate Doyle said.

The multimillion-dollar national grassroots Close Gitmo Now campaign is aimed at pressuring members of Congress to support President Obama’s endeavor to close the Guantanamo Bay prison. It is supported by a coalition of retired generals and liberal activists.

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